


One Phoenix After Another

by zeldadestry



Category: Nikita (TV 2010)
Genre: F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:47:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael always knew Nikita would leave one day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Phoenix After Another

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrefly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrefly/gifts).



“You wanted to see me?”

Amanda turns towards Michael, wearing her omnipresent fake smile. He sometimes wonders who the hell she thinks she’s managing to fool. “I have something for you,” she says, handing him a small, round, silver container.

He unscrews the cap, releasing a waft of perfume, and stares down at the beige plaster within. “What is this?”

“Concealer. The circles under your eyes are getting worse.”

He tosses the container at her face and sees the spark of anger in her eyes just before she catches it in her right hand. “Thanks, but I still feel plenty pretty.”

“Do you know the impression you make, Michael? You’re a leader, here, especially among the recruits. Do you think it builds confidence when the man they trust looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years?”

He wants to say that if he doesn’t sleep well, it has nothing to do with Division, but that’s not entirely true, and he’d be an idiot to offer Amanda any ammunition, anyway. “I sleep well. Do I sleep as much as I need? Probably not, but that’s just part of this job, especially recently. I think I give off the impression of being a dedicated man who works as hard as he can, for as long as it takes, to get things done. Wouldn’t you say that’s a fair assessment?”

“I was only offering a suggestion,” Amanda says, taking his arm and guiding him towards the door of her office. “You know best, of course.” Her face is frozen into its expression of benign concern. “I’m sorry if I seemed to imply otherwise.”

Michael brings out his own phony smile. “No problem.”

 

He knows he looks like shit, drawn and worn. He knows it. When he does fall asleep, he dreams more of Nikita than Elizabeth, now, and hates himself for it. He tells himself it’s ok, that it doesn’t mean he loves Elizabeth any less, or that he’s forgotten or forsaken her. Yeah, he has lots of advice for himself, plenty of platitudes, but it’s all forced comfort, and none of it really helps.

 

Even before Daniel’s murder, Nikita told Michael she would escape someday. “If it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to be free,” she said once, after they’d finished sparring and were cooling down. She stretched her arms up over her head, her whole body lengthening. When he watched her slowly raise and lower her limbs, he could imagine her in a ballet, playing a crane, showing off her wings.

He listed for her all the reasons it was impossible, all the reasons she’d fail. Looking back on it now, he helped her build a blueprint. She knew from him all the ways Division would try to track her down, find her, destroy her. “You’re never going to get out.”

“You’re such a fatalist,” she said.

“No. I’m a realist and you’re an idealist.”

She tapped the tip of his nose with her finger. “Whatever gets you through the night, right?” She bent over to pick up her hoodie and, when she suddenly looked back over her shoulder, she caught him checking out her ass because he didn’t dart his eyes away in time. He fixed her with his sternest stare, but she just laughed harder. “Fatalist pig.” She winked at him and he stopped trying not to grin.

 

Amanda seemed to get some kind of sadistic pleasure out of showing Nikita off to him whenever she and Michael needed to play a couple for an assignment. “Do you like this dress best, Michael?” she’d ask him, while Nikita fidgeted in a short cocktail dress, pulling at its hem, adjusting its straps, sticking her tongue out at him whenever he met her eyes. “You like her in red, don’t you?”

“Sure.” He liked Nikita best in whatever she liked best.

“Should we put her hair up or leave it down?” Amanda pondered, always so serious about details. The way she looked at Nikita scared Michael because it wasn’t any different from how she considered a captive before she proceeded with an interrogation.

Nikita snorted. “I’m not a doll, for fuck’s sake. Can we stop playing dress up?”

“Temper, temper,” Amanda sing-songed, shaking her index finger in Nikita’s face. “And watch your language,” she warned, walking away to look at a selection of jewelry. “You’ll need a necklace.”

Michael moved towards Nikita, close enough to brush the back of his hand across her shoulders. Her coiled muscles eased underneath the touch.

 

They’d been briefed that the rooms they were staying in were under video, but not audio, surveillance. He curled up behind her in the bed, appropriate behavior, since they were pretending to be married. “Did you mean what you said at dinner tonight?”

“When? I said a lot at dinner, Luther kept badgering me with questions.”

“He’s infatuated with you. It will make things a lot easier for me tomorrow afternoon, because I know you’ll have him completely distracted.” He fit his thumb into her belly button and she squirmed in his arms, pinched at his wrist.

“That tickles, asshole!”

“Sorry.” He traced over the lines of her abdominals instead.

“That’s better,” she said.

“You’re ripped.”

“Yeah, I’m a badass, you know it.”

“Yeah, I do.” He ran his hand up her body, until he could feel the grin gracing her face. “Did you mean it?”

“What, Michael?”

“That you wanted children?” He waited, listening to her breathe in the silence. “Nikki?”

“I don’t know.” She tilted her head back enough so that she could see him. “What about you? Would you ever want kids?”

If she hadn’t been looking directly at him, he probably would have lied. “I had a daughter.”

“Oh, Michael, I’m so sorry.” She drew his hand down to rest between her breasts, over her heart. “I had no idea, I wouldn’t have said anything if I had.”

“I know. It’s ok.”

She lay her head back down on her pillow, and he hid his face against her throat. She squeezed his hand in hers. “What was her name?”

“Hay-” His lips shaped the syllable against her soft skin, his voice broke. “Hayley.”

Nikita turned around in his arms, stroked her hand up and down his back, pulled the sheet up enough to wipe off his cheeks. “When I leave,” she whispered, “you should come with me. We could be free, together.” He rolled away from her, onto his back. He covered his eyes with his forearm, his trembling mouth with his other hand. “Michael?”

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to make promises, swear oaths he knew he’d never be able to uphold. “Don’t,” he ordered, when he felt her start to move closer. He waited, forcing deep breaths all the way down into his belly, until the desperation, the need, faded away. He collected himself, put on the persona, before he spoke again. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. It was inappropriate. Let’s forget about all this, ok?”

He’d expected her to argue but instead she said, “If that’s what you need, then, yeah, ok.”

She fell asleep long before he did. Around dawn, she shifted all the way over to his side of the bed, a line of warmth against his side.

In the morning he woke to find her sitting out on the balcony, drinking tea and eating a croissant with jam. “Did you dream?” she asked, when he joined her at the small table.

“I don’t remember. You?”

“Yes.” She leaned across the space separating them, holding out a piece of her pastry, waiting for him to open his mouth so she could feed him. Her fingertips brushed over his lower lip as she drew away.

The jam was made of peaches. He tasted ginger, too. “Sweet dreams, I hope?”

“Yes.” She handed him her cup of tea, watched as he sipped. “Must have been moments from someone else’s life.”

“Or your own, someday.” She smiled at him, more beautiful than ever in the sunlight, and he knew, even as he wondered how the hell he would make it through after she left, that he wanted her to go. Start over, he thought, begin again, you deserve it. I want it for you. And maybe, in time, I will follow. I will follow you.


End file.
